64-bit mirflag memory hogging

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ste616
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Posts: 220
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:27 pm
Location: Paul Wild Observatory Narrabri NSW

64-bit mirflag memory hogging

Post by ste616 »

Recently I have found some datasets that cause 64-bit compiled versions of mirflag to hang and consume vast amounts of memory, even on small datasets. I will describe how this happens and supply two datasets that show this problem for me here.

The two datasets here are: bp1253-055.93000 (CABB data) and 0823-500.1376 (old-correlator data). They can be found in /DATA/KAPUTAR_3/ste616/mirflag_bug.

mirflag is always run in the following way:
mirflag vis=dataset stokes=xx,xx,yy options=amp,medsed,short

Before flagging, both datasets are calibrated with:
mfcal vis=dataset interval=0.1 refant=2

A 32-bit compiled version of mirflag correctly flags both of these datasets, but a 64-bit compiled version (both on Linux) does not. Instead the 64-bit version simply prints out the task name and proceeds to consume large amounts of memory without going anywhere.

Help!
cheers
Jamie Stevens
ATCA Senior System Scientist
len067
ATCA Expert
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2010 2:35 pm

Re: 64-bit mirflag memory hogging

Post by len067 »

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for the information - that helped a lot!

I've managed to track down and fix the problem ... I'll try to upload the updated version of mirflag ASAP.

Cheers,

Emil.
len067
ATCA Expert
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2010 2:35 pm

Re: 64-bit mirflag memory hogging

Post by len067 »

Hi Jamie,

I've created a new release of the mirflag/plotvis tools (v0.1.2) which fixes the bug that you mentioned above (the problem was a due to an error in the way I was reading in the command line parameters):

http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Emil.Le ... otvis.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Note: my Makefile is not particularly clever when it comes to handling 64 bit machines (I haven't really had a chance to investigate how to do this my elegantly) so some tweaking may be required to tell it where the 64 bit libraries are. Another thing which seems to vary depending on which Linux machine I attempt to compile on is whether or not the "g2c" library is required. Some machines seemed to complain bitterly if I didn't include it whereas others did not want it at all.

Cheers,

Emil.
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